The orchard let out a soft breath, and the knot around my chest loosened. He was right. I did know that we’d meant nothing so fatal in our wishes. And I’d known from our first exchange that this voice in the orchard had a good heart. He had acted as a friend when I had no one to trust with my private thoughts. Even now, he was my only friend in a place and time where friendships between boys and girls did not exist. There were brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, husbands and wives—but no friends.
I could not bring myself to look directly at him nor would I offer to shake his hand even though these would have been meaningless gestures in comparison to the intimacies we’d already shared. I felt my face warm to think how much I had relied on this stranger through the ugliest days.
“You’re right. It was such a terrible feeling to think . . .”
“Don’t think that way. You’ve been set free by strange and sad affairs. I won’t speak badly of the dead, but you and I both know what type of person he was. This was not your doing. It wasn’t my doing either, so don’t put it on our shoulders.”
I dared not interrupt when he was saying precisely what I needed him to say. In hindsight, I wonder if much of what he said was a bit too perfect. It was possible that, in my solitude, I’d created this friend out of a shadow of a person and brought him to life to fill a need, a dangerous trick of the mind.
“Fereiba-jan? Say something. Tell me you agree.”
There was no room for doubt when I heard him utter my name. For the time being, he was as real and true and caring as I needed him to be. I couldn’t leave, tied to him by an unseemly thread of my own creation.
CHAPTER 9
Fereiba
“THEY BLAME YOU FOR HIS DEATH. THAT’S WHAT I HEARD,” KOKOGUL said flatly. The back of my neck grew hot. I stopped drying the dishes. The rag hung limply in my hand.
“Me? Why do they think it was me?”
“They say that he was a perfectly healthy young man and that he was taken from his family the day before they were to come for your shirnee. Of course, Agha Firooz’s wife insists that you must be cursed. First your mother, then your grandfather, and now this suitor who was just hours away from becoming your fiancé.”
My eyes grew moist. To name the people whose loss hurt me most was cruel.
“It’s nothing to cry about,” KokoGul admonished. “How could they not draw such conclusions? They’re grieving and conflicted and they know your history. Maybe I should consider myself lucky to be alive.” KokoGul chuckled.
It was possible she had made the whole thing up. I had a hard time telling with her. Sometimes, she got so wrapped up in her own version of the truth that she couldn’t put her finger on the real story. I went back to drying the plates, but she continued.
“I went to pay my respects to his mother. As soon as she saw my face, she burst into a rage of tears and told me my daughter was a curse. She said ever since they started courting you, things had gone very badly for their family. I think a few of the women sitting around her heard, not many.”
Oh God. In the quiet of a fateha, I was certain that every woman in Kabul had heard her. I would be Kabul’s black maiden with whispers and raised brows following me.
“What did you say to her?” I asked hesitantly.
“What could I say to a grieving mother? I told her that I prayed God would give them peace and rest his young soul in heaven.”
“I mean about me. About me being cursed.”
“Fereiba, a fateha is not the time or place to argue. I told her I hoped that wasn’t true.” KokoGul took a glass and poured herself some water. “Anyway, it’s terrible to speak of him this way now that he’s gone, but I hear he was a troublemaker—disrespectful and thieving from his own family. Homaira-jan said he once beat her young son so badly, he couldn’t see out of one eye for a week.”
“When did you see Homaira-jan?” I asked casually, keeping my eyes on the dishes.
“Oh, a couple of weeks ago, in the bazaar. She’s back from her trip to India, showing off her new gold bangles, of course.”
And yet she’d been preparing my shirnee.